Spanky
by doc rob
docrob@planetstarsiege.com
all feedback is welcome

Released 01/16/01

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Installation
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1) Extract ALL files into your baseq3 directory.  If you only extract the .pk3, winzip won't create a directory for Spanky in Baseq3, and he won't show up in the character selection screen.
2) Enjoy

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Story
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Not too long ago, Spanky was a janitor working in the Arenas (somebody's got to clean up all those little bits of brain and skull after the match, don't they?).  Well, one day while waiting for a match to end, he drank a little too much mop water and went koo-koo.  Since he was no longer any use with a broom, the Arena Masters decided that instead of firing him, it would be worth a laugh to strip him down to his skivvies, put him on a tricycle, and send him out to the Arenas to die a thousand deaths.

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Concept
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Spanky was born from my desire do a model for Q3A that used it's body segmentation in a creative way.  I wanted to do full body animations for the run, jump, backpedal, and all the other animations that are the most important to a Q3A character, while at the same time giving the character a face that was expressive enough to be noticed in battle. I had also been digesting a lot of John K. and R. Crumb when I designed Spanky, and I wanted to see if I could accomplish a character of their quality of expressiveness in Q3A.

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Model
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Spanky is 1685 polys (LODs at 1277 and 665), so do not add him to your hard drive unless you have a system that can handle him.  1 Spanky running around is roughly equal to 2 default id models. If you remove the trike, he is actually under 1000, which is a respectable polycount. I was originally planning to animate him without the trike as an alternative download, but didn't have the time. I am still willing to consider it if there is enough demand.

As was mentioned above, Spanky uses non-standard segmentation. His entire body and trike makes up the lower.md3, his head is the upper.md3 (hence the gun is attached to his head), and only his one large eyeball is the head.md3. That is why you see an eyeball in the HUD when you play with Spanky

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Skins
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Spanky includes 3 skins. Default, a Grim Fandango themed Blue CTF skin, and a Goth themed Red CTF skin.  I originally had the area between the spokes on the wheels mapped out with an Alpha shader, but it was causing clipping problems in-game, so I removed it.

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Animations
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Be sure to watch him off a big jump pad, he does BMX bike tricks.  There is a known bug that occurs when you run or walk and then stop.  Q3A will smooth between the run and idle animations, and if  the wheels of the trike are not in the same place at the end of the run as they are at the start of the idle (which they almost never are), weird things happen.  The problem is that instead of rotating the wheel to the right position, the engine will simply move the verticies of the wheels to where they should be.  This makes it look like the wheel is shrinking and then growing.  There is nothing I could do about this, but it's really not that noticiable.

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Sounds
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All new sounds are included, voiced by me.  No, I don't really sound like a twelve-year-old boy, I just thought it fit the character.  The taunt sound is swiped from Happy Gilmore because I didn't think I had the ooomph for the line.

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Thanks
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Thanks to everyone on the polycount messageboards and #modeldesign who helped me with feedback on this model. 

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Copyright
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QUAKEIII:ARENA(R) is a registered trademark of id Software, Inc.
Spanky (c) 2001 Lucas Hardi.  If you want to post Spanky on your site or use him in your mod, just email me and ask me.  Chances are I'll say yes.
This readme file must always be included with the model.